DILI, 4 February 2008 (IRIN) - "It's when you see a child who
looks nine but is actually 12 that you realise the extent of malnutrition
in Timor Leste," Jean Flueren, the World Food Programme (WFP) country
director, told IRIN. "Forty-six percent of children throughout the
country are stunted," he said, and 42.6 percent of children under
five are underweight, according to the WFP.

When the issue of food insecurity in Timor Leste gets mentioned outside
its borders, it is usually about the capacity of the government and the
humanitarian community to meet the nutritional needs of <http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76508>
tens of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who have still not
been able to return home nearly two years since the violence of April and
May 2006.

But equally serious is chronic, widespread food insecurity in this
country of some 1.1 million people. The poorest in Southeast Asia, it has
a per capita income of only US$370 per year, and some 40 percent of the
population fall below the national minimum standard of living of $0.55 per
capita per day, according to a Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
and WFP <http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp085650.pdf>
Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (December
2005/January 2006).

That analysis estimated that 20 percent of the population (some 213,000
people) were food insecure and a further 23 percent (some 244,000) highly
vulnerable to becoming food insecure.

Natural disasters, lack of income

According to the WFP and other humanitarian agencies, two factors are
making the situation worse.

One is a string of natural disasters, including recent drought,
extensive flooding, wind damage and an infestation of locusts in some
areas in 2007. (The locusts not only consumed crops but led to some
farmers not replanting for fear their efforts would be wasted.)

The other is lack of income. "Food security is an immense problem
because people have no purchasing power," the WFP country director
told IRIN.

With the twin punches of nature's assault on agriculture, which leaves
farmers inadequate goods to sell and inadequate income to plant new crops,
and the widespread damage from conflict - with hundreds of thousands of
livelihoods lost, markets disrupted and food price hikes - Timorese
increasingly lack the means to engage in productive agriculture or the
money to buy the essentials of a basic, nutritious diet.

"The study found that while 50 percent of the IDPs we were feeding
were not food insecure," said Flueren, "half of those not
receiving food assistance [the normal Dili residents] were food
insecure."

According to the FAO/WFP assessment, "the difference in terms of
being at risk to lives or livelihoods between the IDPs and residents is
minimal." Flueren said this is countrywide, not just in Dili.

In terms of food assistance to IDPs, the government, WFP and
humanitarian agencies have a commendable track record, distributing full
rations over two years to more people than are in the camps.

"There are 30,000-35,000 IDPs in Dili," said WFP's Flueren,
"but we [with the government and other agencies] have been delivering
food to 75,000."

In three Dili camps recently visited by IRIN, we could find no
significant complaints about food assistance. "Occasionally"
says, Joaquim Da Costa, an IDP and camp manager at the National Hospital
camp site, "we have a problem with the food - a bad bag of rice
expired."

Ending food aid dependency

The Ministry of Social Solidarity, as a part of its National Recovery
Plan, aims to induce IDPs to return home by ending blanket distribution of
food from February - reducing to half rations for two months before ending
it completely in April.

Some IDPs in Dili told IRIN they were against such a food reduction
policy, and one Dili newspaper, Diario Nacional, reported that in one camp
IDPs said such cutbacks could result in civil unrest, including strikes
and roadblocks.

As an incentive for IDPs to return home, families who agree to go will
be provided with two months of rice rations (16 kilos per person).

Better targeted food aid

According to WFP's Flueren, "the Ministry of Social Services has
ongoing programmes to provide food assistance as it can" and in the
coming months the ministry, with humanitarian agencies, will target food
assistance increasingly to particularly vulnerable individuals and
communities. Flueren said: "We are now working with the government to
develop and design training programmes for food insecure people that help
increase livelihoods."

"Over the next few months alternative programmes will have to be
put in place that ensure that people who are truly food insecure, such as
the elderly, female-headed households and orphans, receive the support
they require," said Finn Reske-Nielson, UN humanitarian coordinator
and deputy special representative of the Secretary-General.

Reske-Nielson added: "Such alternative programmes would not
necessarily just be the distribution of food because we have to move away
from the dependence that has been created since the crisis of 2006."

"Food can play a role," he said, "but it could perhaps
be in the context of food-for-work, school feeding programmes, but not
blanket feeding to 70,000 people each month.

Tackling natural disasters

An important complement to the effort to increasingly target food
secure individuals and communities, are efforts to establish mechanisms to
effectively warn against and deal with natural disasters. Secretary of
State for Social Assistance and Natural Disasters Jacinto Rigoberto Gomes,
told IRIN: "We are establishing a disaster information centre to deal
with heavy wind, landslides, earthquakes, droughts, flooding and other
natural disasters." He said it was being done with the support and
advice of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and
the UN Development Programme.

Such a project, if it can get the financial support and communications
capacity needed, said Gomes, will go a long way in preparing residents for
disasters and mitigating their effects. In Timor Leste that will help
immeasurably not just in saving lives but in reducing crop and food
destruction, thus enhancing food security.